The Golden Key

by Marian Womack

  Sam looked at her puzzled, and then at the book.

  ‘They were studying it. Look, it’s marked everywhere.’

  It looked as if she had finally managed to grab his attention. He flipped through the pages briefly, and started inspecting the notes and the underlined sentences. Eventually he said:

  ‘It seems as if they almost got the point of it,’ and threw the book back at her.

  ‘The point of what?’

  ‘That book is not a work of the imagination, it’s a travel guide.’

  She couldn’t deny it: she and Eliza had discussed the same possibility. It was unnerving to have it corroborated. ‘I know it is dull at times, but—’ Even then she was trying to hold on to some kind of rationality.

  ‘Have you read it?’

  ‘Of course I’ve read it! I care about what happened to those children. I care about what is happening now to other children—’

  Sam was looking at her but said nothing. He sighed, and bit his lips. He didn’t say anything for a moment. Eventually, he asked:

  ‘Other children, you said?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Sam reached for the bottle of berry vodka. It was almost empty.

  ‘We are going to need a bit more than this,’ he said.

  ‘Good boy,’ Jim said.

  ‘Something happened in Norfolk,’ Helena said, ‘something I don’t have a rational answer for—no, that’s not entirely accurate. Several things happened in Norfolk I don’t have answers for. And my business, Samuel, is about finding answers, no matter what they might be. I would be a very poor investigator if I were to let my prejudices cloud getting to them.’

  He didn’t reply.

  ‘I have been trying to find a rational solution for all of this. There must be a connection, with the factory, with the fungi. We, Eliza Waltraud and me… Eliza is a young scientist who is also looking into this. She thinks the infestation originated in there, and it extended somehow.’ She got up, found some paper and a pencil, and started drawing. ‘Look, the factory is, was, here. The fungi got to the ruins by the coast, and the children, somehow, may have transported some spores back to their nursery.’

  He was looking at her with attention, but somehow she knew he didn’t believe what she was saying.

  ‘Like a form of pollution. Eliza ran some tests with the fungi. Some places are completely taken over: the ruins of the church, the nursery, the ruined Tudor manor…’ He looked at her suddenly. ‘These are the places where the… hauntings, or whatever you want to call them, manifest themselves more fully.’

  ‘Hauntings?’ asked Jim.

  ‘The fungi was enormous in these places, monstrous.’

  ‘What does it do? Kill you?’

  ‘It makes you see things, feel things… Things that are not there. We could have lost our wits, suffered loss of memory, lost our way completely to never return.’

  ‘Is that what you think happened to the children?’

  She looked intently at him.

  ‘We are not very sure what happened to the children.’

  ‘I see,’ was all he said. He got up, and walked slowly to the other end of the room. ‘Go away, Helena,’ he repeated.

  ‘There’s more to this, so much more.’ She thought of the demonic figure in the estuary, of Mr Friars’s statement about young Mr Chapman. She thought of Bévcar, which the SPR’s report connected horribly with the young man in front of her. And she thought of the three pages of Maud’s diary, so brief and so revealing. It was all connected; Bévcar might have been trespassing into East Anglia for decades, taking children with him.

  ‘Tell me, Mr Moncrieff, have you ever seen a strange-looking beggar who kept appearing in the places where you happened to be? A strange-looking beggar who is also a gentleman when you see him beyond the veil that separates us from his world?’

  Sam turned furiously in her direction. ‘What do you want from me?’

  Helena didn’t reply immediately. ‘I was hoping that you would help me understand some things.’

  He looked at her intently. ‘Why me?’

  Helena and Jim exchanged a look. ‘You will be turning twenty-one soon, am I right?’ she offered.

  ‘So?’

  ‘We are not very sure of what happened to the children,’ she repeated. ‘But, like I say, we do know it is connected with your being here.’

  She turned to face him, and she saw it then. The patterns on the floor, the jars with strange liquids, the little bits of twigs, the butterfly wings, the moth wings, the little green pebbles of rhyolite, so similar to the one that Rosie had… used. That was the word. She realised that now.

  ‘Magic. You are doing magic here.’ It wasn’t a question.

  He started walking towards her, slowly, and Helena started walking backwards.

  ‘I have remembered some things. Some things about myself.’

  ‘You are doing magic, aren’t you? You know it; you know who you are.’

  ‘I have remembered some things. Some things about myself. About my home. And about my father.’

  He picked up Bévcar’s book, threw it on the floor. So the SPR’s report was correct at least on that.

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I know. And I am truly sorry, Samuel.’

  Eventually she left them, with the promise of coming back the next morning.

  She could not sleep that night; she kept turning and turning in her bed. At that moment between consciousness and oblivion, her tired, overworked brain was still placing the pieces, one by one, next to each other, each different hindsight revealing hidden meanings in the next. She thought she understood, but needed confirmation.

  The next morning, she woke up to a stillness that didn’t anticipate anything good. Almost before arriving, she knew it: Sam had gone. On top of Bévcar’s book there was an envelope addressed to her, and inside it the last clue.

  Dear Helena,

  I can hardly write these lines. Here I am, sitting and trying to focus on the blank pages in front of me. There’s so much I have to tell you that I hardly know how to start putting the words together. I think I hoped that if you solve this mystery, I would be allowed to stay. But that was a fantasy, I see that now that I truly know who I am, now I’ve come to understand the horrid truth that simmers beneath the surface of Mr Samuel Moncrieff.

  I have no doubts that by now you understand it—the thread that ties me to the other side, endlessly pulling, how deeply its dark currents run through my veins. There is a reason for that; there’s much about myself that I have come to realise in the past few weeks, and I’m still unsure of how to process this knowledge. But, first of all, allow me to tell you a story—how one day changed everything!

  Viola played with me mercilessly during that whole summer. By the autumn I was in a frenzy, utterly miserable. The weather was unseasonably warm—it was as if I were provoking somehow this oddness, this late heat. And who knows? It seems to me that perhaps I was, since I didn’t want the summer to end. Unseasonable weather or not, that would be our last outing.

  Two other people came with us that morning, a friend of Viola’s and a boy, I think it was the girl’s little brother. Their faces blur; they were, are, unimportant. We were on the river; I punted. We saw it by chance, we almost missed it in fact: a little chapel of Cotswold stone lying in ruins in the middle of what looked like a deserted meadow, entirely unexpected. We all agreed it was a perfect place to have our picnic, and abandoned the punt.

  It happened there, among the ruins. We kissed, finally. The friend’s brother was nowhere to be seen; he was an amateur botanist, and went looking for some kind of reed or other—I can’t recollect the particulars, for I truly did not care about them. Her friend was close by. Suddenly, Viola started laughing at me. Her friend joined in, and they both laughed and laughed at my expense. That is all our kiss had been to her, a schoolgirl joke.

  It was too much to bear. I got up, and stumbled clumsily, and, in order to prevent myself from falling, supported myself on o
ne of the chapel stones. It was then that I saw it, my true self. Some energy travelled through my fingers, and infused itself into the stone I was holding. A strange fungus, yellow and brown and lukewarm, sprouted where my fingers touched the stone, as if by magic. I don’t know what I was feeling exactly: anger, at having been a mere puppet for her fun. Selfishness. A disproportionate sense of my own entitlement. It was as if I had assumed she had to be mine simply because that was what I wanted. I am ashamed of writing this. In any case, something exploded inside me then, and a green light, dense as a cloud, descended upon us. A kind of door, for lack of a better word, opened in mid-air, and I got a glimpse of what I now know is my home. To Viola or to the girl I don’t know what happened, exactly, for I stepped in, or shall I say I stepped back into it, for the first time in nearly twenty years.

  Yes, Helena, my home. Like I say, I do not desire to keep any more secrets. The mere word, secret, makes me gag with disgust.

  And now let me tell you what I infer happened all those years back. It is my belief that, as you may have guessed, the three Matthews children managed to open a portal of communication to what they must have believed to be some kind of fairyland, or perhaps Wonderland, perhaps aided by him, Bévcar. He somehow lures children into doing so, tricks them. It is also my belief that some kind of exchange took place on that occasion, perhaps because it was needed—I am still not privy to which rules apply, if any—that meant that I, somehow, crossed back over the threshold here. It all happened in the Tudor manor, the one that I have seen in my nightmares since childhood.

  What about the fungi? Although I am sure that your friend is correct, it is clear to me that it came from that other world, that it doesn’t truly belong here.

  So, Helena, I could not blame you for all that you might be feeling: shock, disgust.

  Now you see it is me who is to blame for what happened, to Viola at least; who knows what happened, or is happening, to others, now or in the past or the future. I need to stop this somehow. These two worlds were never meant to touch each other, be it ever so lightly. So much pain is produced by it. I see now that my stay here was a little sojourn of no consequence. I don’t belong in this world, not really. And soon I will walk back forever into the other.

  So I’m going after him. I believe that my only chance against Bévcar, my father, is on our common soil. That here, where he only appears in the guise of the demonic beggar, he is untouchable. I’m going after him, and I don’t expect to come back.

  It seems cruel to think that my life here is finished, when I feel it had only just started. But I owe it to Viola, and to who knows how many others. I take this thought with me to give me strength for what is now to come, as I cross to the other side.

  Yours faithfully,

  Samuel Moncrieff

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  St George’s Wood

  Haslemere

  Surrey

  May 1901

  Dear Miss Waltraud,

  Thank you for your letter to my husband of last week, and please excuse our slight delay in replying. I must confess I was a bit baffled by it. We do not normally allow visitors, as my husband’s advanced years make it difficult for him to spend the days in relative comfort. However, since you say that it is a life-and-death situation, we would welcome you to visit him any afternoon of your convenience this week. My husband usually has his tea at half past three, and retires shortly after sometimes, and therefore I advise that you come a bit earlier than that. I am not sure how much help he will be able to give you, but he has personally requested your presence. Please let us know your plans, and we will send a car to pick you up at the station.

  Sincerely,

  Louisa MacDonald

  The man sat alone at the bottom of the garden, underneath a willow. He was covered by a woollen rug and didn’t look up when she approached.

  ‘Ah, Miss Waltraud… Did I pronounce that right?’

  He had a leonine white mane, entirely unexpected, that reminded her of portraits of Tolstoy she had seen in a London bookshop. Eliza also hadn’t expected such a cheerful pale eye, or such a broad smile, after reading such serious fairy stories. Sure, they contained humour, but one could tell it was the humour of someone who was controlling how much he used it, and with a specific purpose in mind.

  ‘You pronounce it perfectly, Mr MacDonald. It is very kind of you to agree to see me at such short notice.’

  ‘Short notice, long notice… I seldom see anyone these days, so it doesn’t signify.’

  ‘What doesn’t signify?’

  ‘The notice, of course.’ He smiled again, and motioned for her to sit in a white iron garden chair, which she did, as straight as a bird on a branch. It was uncomfortable, and the discomfort reminded her instantly of what she was doing there.

  ‘Mr MacDonald, if I may…’

  ‘Please, call me George. I am too old for formalities,’ the old man said.

  ‘I have been reading your stories with interest…’ He looked at her, frowning. Eliza continued, ‘There are some things that puzzle me a great deal. I’m not a literary critic, but still—’

  ‘Ah!’ he interrupted. ‘I see. The wording of your letter led me to believe that you may want to discuss something… of a slightly different nature.’

  She was lost for words for a moment.

  ‘Mr MacDonald—George. It struck me that your fairy stories and novellas possess a further meaning, that there is a dark, sinister current running through them…’

  ‘Well, perhaps that is due to the fact that I don’t write them for children in particular.’

  ‘I beg your pardon? Surely they are books bought for the nursery, sir.’

  ‘I don’t write for children, but for the childlike, Miss Waltraud. There is a difference, whether one talks of a human creature of nine or of ninety-nine.’

  ‘But, the darkness in them, sir…’

  ‘We give very little credit to children, my dear. They are more used to darkness than we might think. They do not need to be segregated, cut off, from every experience that threatens their sense of wonder and their innocence. Sometimes children are much more perceptive than adults about death, for example,’ he said, and Eliza thought he was reflecting on some specific occurrence. ‘Miss Waltraud,’ he continued, ‘if there is something I dislike, it is having to “explain” my stories. Explanations, explanations and more explanations… that is all that is ever required of me. If someone does not understand my tales, why am I going to write a signpost to indicate my meaning? And what is my meaning, anyway? Children are much more used to this as well, to the fact that there are no settled meanings—that is a fallacy created by the modern world in order for a few to establish what is right and what is wrong. And some things are not so clean-cut, my dear. We are surrounded by grey matter. Well, the same can be said of my tales.’

  ‘I am afraid I don’t follow, sir.’

  ‘Think of this, then. Does a sonata possess a fixed meaning for everyone who hears it? Does nature? Are sonatas or nature failures because we cannot grasp their ultimate meaning? The same happens with the world, and with my stories. Children are much more perceptive than us in that sense, I find. They have no compunction in accepting that meanings are unsettled, that borders are porous, that each person will create their own interpretation. The best thing one can do is to rouse somebody’s consciousness. Show them that there are no fixed ways to look at the world. We are but guests here, and only for a limited time.’

  That last sentence gave her the courage to say:

  ‘Are children also more able to open doors, or walk across unseen thresholds, Mr MacDonald?’

  The old man looked at her in alarm. His face was a rigid mask, and her words had cut short his verbosity.

  ‘My dear Miss Waltraud…’ he said at last, his eyes fixed on hers, his voice lowered.

  ‘Is that what you mean by porous borders? Does our world possess porous borders of the kind you describe so often in your tales? Because I need to fi
nd one.’

  ‘Do you mean… crossing over?’

  ‘That is exactly what I mean.’

  ‘But surely… if you know about the other side and if you have read my books… surely you know.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That it is no Wonderland you are seeking, but Hell.’

  Eliza used the silence to look up, and considered the clouds for a second. They had fantastic shapes, as all clouds do, and she reflected on what a strange little child she had been; hardly any friends, no favourite dolls named with pretty little names, no fondness for playing at cloudsight. What had she done to keep herself entertained, if she had not followed these childhood pursuits? She could not remember. Nothing special, surely.

  ‘I don’t care,’ she said at last. ‘I have to go.’

  He looked at her, horrified.

  ‘And I don’t know the way, Mr MacDonald. It is as simple as that. I need your help.’

  ‘But, my dear child! You have misunderstood everything I wrote!’ the old man protested, clearly worried now.

  ‘I thought you just said there are no fixed meanings.’

  ‘I was talking about allegories! Literature! My young friend, what you are saying, what you are trying to achieve, it is very dangerous, more than you can imagine.’

  She sighed, fearing nothing would be obtained with her visit.

  Eventually, the old man said, to her surprise, ‘Well, if you are here, seeking this knowledge, you must know enough already. I won’t patronise you by explaining the possible dangers.’ She turned to look curiously at him. ‘But surely you must see that my stories are cautionary tales, precisely against going there, or anywhere near there?’

  ‘Mr MacDonald, some children have disappeared, and what I am trying to do—’

  ‘Exactly! Some children have disappeared, and will continue disappearing, until we teach them to recognise the dark, and to keep away from it.’

  She decided on a more direct approach.

  ‘Mr MacDonald, can you help me cross the threshold or not?’

  He looked at her with infinite sadness.